


Next of Kin

by InfiniteCalm



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Battle of the Department of Mysteries, Blood, Canonical Character Death, Death, Dumbedore is trying, Epistolary, Letters, M/M, Mentor Minerva McGonagall, Minor Canonical Character(s), Molly Weasley knows what she's doing, POV Remus Lupin, Post-Order of the Phoenix, Sad, and its fun aftermath, and loves her family, dumbledore is complicated, is harry ok?, kreacher is a little shit, no but this fic is not about him, not canon divergent, remus is sad, sorry - Freeform, tragic jam related insights
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-12
Updated: 2017-04-12
Packaged: 2018-10-18 04:17:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,750
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10609107
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InfiniteCalm/pseuds/InfiniteCalm
Summary: After the Department of Mysteries, Lupin goes home.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This ship... idk guys I only ever read it in AU because I do not enjoy the soul crushing realities of the canon, but I can only ever write it in canon- and as well, only the worst aspects of the canon. I have a lot of happy headcanons but Jesus all that ever seems to be written is literal death. Anyway, warnings all in the tags, cw for blood but it's less than canon-typical stuff, I'm sorry but actually not all that sorry? Funny that. Title from the song by Alvvays.

Hello Love,

It’s been a quiet week here, and I found myself missing you. It’s always the worst when there’s really nothing going on and all I can do is look at the calendar slip away; nobody to talk to. So I’m writing to you now on Monday. God only knows if I’ll ever get to send this to you. War is for the young, I think. I foolishly thought myself to be so before this mess all started, but sadly I have developed a dodgy knee; and that therefore is the end of me.

From what I hear he’s getting on quite well in school but you’d probably know better than I would; the only problems I’ve been hearing about come from his temper. I know it’s impossible that he gets it from you, and all the rest, but when he gives out he really reminds me of you; you’re angry in the same way (although not at the same things, obviously.) Anyway, don’t start- I can hear from here, the doesn’t he have a right to be angry, wouldn’t you be angry if you were him- yes, of course I would be, and I _am_ angry for him, of course I am, but he’ll never get anywhere unless he controls it better than what he’s doing. It’s not about emotional catharsis during war, you know. You do know this. Sometimes you have to keep mum and win that way. People will never take him seriously unless he acts like an adult. I know, I know- he’s still only a child. Anger doesn’t solve anything, and he has to go through a lot more before he can feel better. I suppose I’m asking you not to encourage him to feel angry. Whatever you think you can do, I guess.

I hate to think of you in that old house with nothing to do but read books and pick up hippogriff shit. Today I actually wanted to go home and tidy the kitchen. Isn’t that sad? God, if I could have known that one day I’d want to go home and my first thought would be that I could finally clean the kitchen when I was fifteen I probably would have cried. You’re going to get annoyed at me now, aren’t you? I am well able to clean the kitchen, you know. I know my limits and my back is fine.

Speaking of being 15- you remember when we went to Leeds? I was thinking about the other day and then when I fell asleep I dreamed about it. We were going to play football, against Leeds, even though you had never played, and then we got prawn cocktail crisps but a ghost ate them and threw the packet into the air, which was a disaster because it meant I had to play in goal against Leeds United and we lost 16-0 and you thought that was an alright score. Analyse that, if you want. You can do it after the crossword. Anyway.

Hard to believe it’s 1995 and we’re still fighting this bloody war, isn’t it? Still, in a backwards way it kind of gives you hope. Kind of. Still here, despite it all. Against the odds, really, in both of our cases. Remember that when you start getting grumpy, or when Buckbeak inevitably takes a lump out of your shoulder. Things are rarely hopeless, you know, even though you’ve suffered worse than other people have. Statistically, you’re in line for something good, soon.

It’s annoying to think about you and not be there beside you but what can I do. If next week is as slow as this one, they’re talking about giving me a break. Which would be nice, for Christmas. I miss your little face.

M XXX

Dear Lunatic

How did you get this address? Who are you? Why are you talking such utter shite?

Ah, no. Don’t get your knickers in a twist, it’s me, your love, who seems to have about as much free time as you do, what on earth are you doing out there seriously. It seems you only miss what you had when you don’t have it anymore, as you constantly complain about me when I am here even though empirically I am very loveable. I saw a handsome young man on a bicycle the other day and maybe I will just go after him instead, he looked like he would not constantly complain about my friends and the state of my kitchen, which is not that bad actually. You should get yourself a hobby, like knitting. Maybe you would worry less about your feelings about cleaning then.

He is reacting not only reasonably but in the only way a 15-year-old can act and I think you’re being harsh, usually he’s with friends or something, I hear there’s a right old bitch who’s started to work there now from the ministry, sounds like we would have given her a run for her money back in the day. Anyway are you surprised, you can’t expect him not to act like his father? His father was always shouting about something (usually something you disapproved of, actually, that’s probably where you get it.) He’s in pain and you’re saying don’t be angry? That’s hypocritical! Well… maybe not hypocritical, but you can’t expect everyone to act like you act when you’re angry and anyway you got in less trouble as a teenager but not _that_ much less trouble for God’s sake you’re not exactly a paragon of virtue yourself. And also I am not at all encouraging him thank you for that vote of confidence.

That above paragraph is kind of angry now that I read over it. It would probably read better if you were here. 

More RE the kitchen, I never said you couldn’t clean the kitchen, cleaning the kitchen would be a lovely thing to do, especially Molly would like that, I think (Again I’m saying it’s _not that bad_ ) but anyway it’s just that you are v allergic to some of the things upstairs, is what I’m saying, and please don’t say that your back wouldn’t hurt you, because we both know that it would. And I’d never hear the end of it from Molly who would blame me completely because she has something against me, probably my charm and good looks. The idea that you know your limits is completely laughable, I am laughing to myself as I do this crossword, you are a complete nutter but you’re just quieter about it than the rest of us.

Your dream clearly means that you are hungry and want crisps. We only have ready salted left. I am wasting away. You probably wrote this late at night because it’s very sappy. Kreacher just spilled milk all over the fucking floor why is this the life I have been chosen to lead. God help us all.

Pads/known mass murderer sirius black.

(P.S You better be home for Christmas or I will raise such a stink with the Boss)

+

Remus can, when he returns, see the marker in the thick novel Sirius had been reading- how it is three quarters of the way falling out; and how the book itself sits with a heavy air beside a plate of toast.

The toast is smothered in raspberry jam, which has congealed and turned a strange grey-pink colour. There are lumps of fruit in this kind of jam that Sirius used to savour- he used to pick them off and leave them to the side with his fingers, and then eat them. It was unappealing habit but then he was full of those, and always had been.

Molly had been in St. Mungo’s, visiting Tonks.

“You haven’t changed your clothes,” she’d said, and he’d looked down and seen that it was true. Neville Longbottom’s blood had dried into his shirt- ruined, he’d have to buy a new one (with what cash) and there was dust all over his skin and trousers.

“You haven’t been home,” She said, and he nodded. Not since.

“No,” he said, seeing how old she looked, how her eyes were suddenly bigger than they had been, and how her red hair offered more contrast to the rest of her than before. She’d never been thin; but she was approaching it now. Arthur stood behind her, not touching but almost, as if he expected her to fall. But she was still standing straight and her posture was still good.

“Well, you have to go back and get fresh clothes if you’re meeting Dumbledore”, She’d said, and now there were here. In the kitchen.

Remus moves, his feet turning and the rest of him following, and everything feels very slow. He starts to head up the stairs, the woods straining and creaking under his feet. This is an old house. They really should have painted it or made it brighter or bought new furniture. But he’s not here to think about interior design, he is here just to pick up fresh clothes so he can debrief, and then he can get something to eat, maybe; there’s a Moon not too far away and he’s already feeling the tug. The idea of eating seems like something that maybe other people have done; he can’t imagine why anyone would ever want to do such a thing. The top of the stairs is dusty. The corridor along to the room has never been so long. His feet take him, eventually, to the door with the childish poster- “SIRIUS’, KEEP OUT!!!!”. He looks at the poster, and the scrawled pencil drawing, at the peeling grey paint and the silver doorknob- the silver doorknob. The doorknob has not always been silver, he knows; he has been in and out of this room many times in the past few days, months; even at the beginning this doorknob was not silver. He pushes on the wood but it does not budge. He pushes again, harder, a ray of panic infiltrating the smoke in his head. The door must be locked, but he doesn’t know where to being finding a key.

Suddenly, the prospect of going in there and seeing things as they were this morning seems almost unholy; monstrous, preposterous, a crime against- a crime against something he cannot name, and Remus stops pushing and instead looks at his hands, and wants to scream.

Molly has been coming up the stairs behind him, and at the sound of her heavy footsteps he turns, and opens his mouth, but there are no more words to say; he cannot think of anything that would be of any use. She doesn’t look at him, grips the handle, opens the door, and he turns his face away from the sight. She comes out a few minutes later with a rumpled shirt and trousers he doesn’t wear very often because they have a visible seam in the leg from where he needed to fix them by hand. They used to be his good pair; he bought them in a charity shop in Bradford. It had been a difficult time. He had felt like he was dying. There’d been money, though, a job in a bookshop in Leicester that turned a blind eye for as long as they possibly could. He’d loved that place; it had been the pinnacle of what he thought he could aim for. The shop was not cold and didn’t mind that he read when there weren’t any customers. He ate well and still felt hollow; but it wasn’t anybody’s fault.

Molly hands him the clothes and he changes in the bathroom. His stockinged feet feel the cold rise up through the tiles on the floor. His skin is technicolour. He washes blood off his shoulder, his arms, his hands. He’s not sure which is his and which belongs to a fifteen-year-old. Molly stands outside and calls in that she has a salve for bruising, if he wants, but he tells her, hoarse and small, that he’s actually alright. They feel like the first words he’s ever spoken. She’d have to touch his skin, is the thing; and he could live without anyone touching him ever again.

But no, no, don’t worry about me, I’m fine, this is about Harry, how is he holding up? He practises, trying to make the sentence sound normal in his head. It’s complicated by the fact that downstairs, the toast is still on the table next to the book.

But Molly audibly sighs, and comes in, and he lets her rub the salve anyway. He feels no different. She doesn’t say anything, and when she’s finished she looks at the floor. He murmurs a thank you and does up his shirt carefully, but she doesn’t look him in the face, and that’s how he knows that not looking in the mirror was the right choice.

In back into the kitchen, he washes up the cups and saucers, puts them away, put the cornflakes into the cupboard and puts the book back on the shelf, removing the card from inside it. He sweeps up the crumbs and the floor, he fixes the chairs, he makes sure that there’s enough of everything for the next meeting and writes notes for what isn’t there; he wipes down all the surfaces and by the end of it the kitchen is clean again and he feels like he’s committed a murder. But someone had to make sure the place was ready for whoever was next going to meet here. The toast was on the silver plate because all the others were stacked up in the sink, and even if it wasn’t, the small pile of raspberry lumps on the side would have made it impossible to move. Remus sits down opposite it and stares as it sits- impassive, heavy- on the plate.

Molly comes in with her hair brushed and her face washed. She looks around the kitchen in surprise.

“Well done,” She says. “Shall we head back?” She seems in a hurry to be gone- but he remembers her children (or some of her children) are back at the hospital and she probably wants to see them.

“Ron and Ginny? They’re alright?” He asks, the names curiously heavy on his tongue but at least they’re still present tense.

Molly looks at him.

“Oh, yes.” She says. “They’re”- but she begins, but suddenly she bursts into tears. She cries and cries; it’s like something’s been turned on that won’t stop until it runs dry. “Stupid, stupid,” she says, but he stands up anyway and finds her a hanky, and puts his arm around her as she stands with her head bowed. He thinks, fleetingly, that this is not fair, but then she is his friend and her children could have died. “It’s just, this isn’t the end of it, at all;” she says.

Imagine if it _had_ been the end of it and he had not gone where he had; they could go walking down the street together to see the shops and what’s changed in the music scene; they could go to Flourish and Blotts or Fred and Georges’, they could burn or sell this kip and move far away, maybe to a nice house in Yorkshire or a small flat here, and they could let people stay- Harry could stay for the holidays, and then the removal of Harry’s burden would make everyone feel much calmer, and they could go for long constitutionals on Sundays and come back, pink cheeked, to hot dinners, they could go to sleep and wake up and not think, what now? But rather, we need to get bread and I should probably weed the garden. Imagine if it had been the end of it- Harry might finally get a chance to breathe and revise for his exams.

Poor Harry’s grief must be enormous.

This is all his fault.

Truth is an ugly weapon and Remus doesn’t blame Harry in the slightest, except for he does, except for he couldn’t ever blame him because he’s not to blame.

He can hear Sirius’ voice echo down from far away- “I love this child more than I love anyone in my own family. Which doesn’t mean much, actually. Pretend I had a decent family.”

The toast, again. Molly dries her eyes and then shakes her head angrily. She picks up the plate and throws the toast away, washes it and leaves it on the draining board.

Dumbledore’s there when they arrive back up.

“Lupin” he says, his eyes heavy lidded, his face drawn. “Let me offer you my sincere condolences.”

“This isn’t about me,” Remus says. He feels like the force of his own voice is enough to bring him to his knees. He wonders what will happen when the smoke behind his eyes wears away.

“But you have lost someone very dear to you, I think.” Dumbledore says. “I have recently been reminded of the importance of emotion, within this line of work.”

“I think, professor, that it’s best if I don’t dwell on what my circumstances are,” Remus says, exhausted by this conversation already, not feeling up to playing the guessing games of a debriefing. They are not here to talk feelings and trying to pretend otherwise is offensive. “I assume you’ve talked to Harry?”

“He was, naturally, very upset. I suggest you do what you can to help, over the Summer. You two were closer to Sirius”- Remus feel a surge of anger, suddenly- “than anyone else. This next year, I am afraid, will prove to be, perhaps, one of the more decisive of the last decade.” Which is Dumbledore speak for, you will probably be dead next year so you may as well do what you can now. “We need Harry as rested as can be.”

“Of course, professor.”

The rest of the meeting is housekeeping and orders to be places at times and other things like that; tasks and admin and now that Sirius isn’t around to kick up a fuss, Remus assumes it isn’t long until he’s sent out to recruit again.

“Minerva was wondering if you were around, Lupin,” Dumbledore says, at the end of the meeting. “She’s in the staffroom, if you would like to see her.”

Why not, Remus thinks, as his hands begin to shake with exhaustion. The real question is what on Earth she will have to talk to me about right now.

The staffroom password has not changed since he last used it, which seems bizarre to him. When he was in school they knew for a fact that it was changed every month. He goes in and his strength suddenly fails him. Minerva is marking exams at a desk, looking exhausted. They’re alone; he guesses the other teachers are in their offices or with their tutor groups or houses. She looks up when she sees he’s come in and her mouth tightens. It used to tighten like that when they did something outrageous or when Harry Potter and his friends had been particularly inventive (or, to be fair, when Oliver Wood left the school and Gryffindor’s prospects at a double win went with him).

“I floo’d your father” she says. They’re good friends. He supposes it makes sense. “I know it wasn’t ideal. But I thought he ought to know, and in your position…”

It’s thoughtful thing to do. It nearly floors him.

“Sit down before you fall down, Remus,” She says, and he does. “I’ll make you some tea.”

In the end, his hands are shaking too much to take the tea, and he sits there and watches it steam in front of him, with Minerva’s hand around his shoulders. He can see she’s been crying a bit and it’s nice to know that someone has cried for Sirius; nice to know that someone loved him enough to do that. He’s sure that Harry probably won’t cry; probably thinks it’s not a thing that a chosen one does. Grief is still foreign to Remus. He does not know where to start.

“You need to go straight to your father’s house, after this,” Minerva says. “You’re not well at all. You look like you’re running a fever.”

“I don’t get sick,” Remus says, hoarse. He takes a sip of the tea. It’s hot and sweet.

“Well, then, that’s even worse. Come on. You shouldn’t be alone and the staff will be coming in soon. Those are some questions I’m sure you don’t want to have to answer. Finish your tea and we’ll go. Your father’s expecting us.”

“Oh no, Minerva, you’ve done more than enough, really. You shouldn’t give up your time to”-

“Well, someone has to, and I don’t mind doing it for you,” Minerva says. “You know, I’m sure this won’t help you now, but I was talking to Sirius over the Christmas holidays, and he was talking about you.”

“Oh yes?”

“He said that”- her voice breaks a little. “Oh, Remus. He said that- well we were talking about how he was doing, after it all. He wasn’t answering any questions; you know he had no time for me.”

“Of course not” Remus says softly.

“I could always tell when he was lying because he wasn’t very good at it; so I just came out and told him that I could tell that he wasn’t doing well.”

He feels guilt twist his stomach because he could see the same thing and had not said anything. Anything for an easy life. If he had just been better at the whole thing, but he had no idea how to work around it. He had been so lazy, he could have found something out-

“He said to me, Well, no, maybe not all the time, and you were off in the corner talking to Hermione Granger, and he pointed at you and said that you were the reason he even got up in the morning.”

Remus turns his head too look at her.

“That’s a horrible story” he says. “God, what a thing to say.”

“He really loved you, Remus.” Minerva says, gently. “Oh, look. Your tea is finished. We’ll use the fireplace.”

They go home, and Lyall is there and Remus says hello and then goes to bed, dizzy, doesn’t wake up for a long time. He lives for two more years, against the odds, and the smoke never lifts, and Sirius doesn’t ever get his tears; Remus never cries for him.


End file.
